Jehv Gold understands the economic realities of recent events all too well.
Just as the shock of the Trade Center crashes began to sink in, he had to contend with the financial toll the disaster took on his small Manhattan mail order business.
“The impact has been complete and devastating,” he said the Friday after the tragedy. “Our calls have been off 80% since Tuesday.”
Manhattan Fruitiers, located below midtown in Manhattan, markets specialty fruit baskets and gourmet foods through a six-times-a-year catalog, a Web site (www.manhattanfruitier.com) and bimonthly e-mail marketing messages. The business brings in $3 million to $5 million annually, said Gold, doing best over the holidays.
Gold’s misfortune amounts to more than a week’s lost sales. The week the hijackings occurred is the week Manhattan Fruitiers usually gears up for the holiday season, with big promotions — and substantial sales — over the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Those holidays are the company’s third-largest sales week behind Christmas and Thanksgiving.
“We just sent out 35,000 catalogs for fall,” he said. “Typically, by now under 100.”
Telephone service was sporadic in his area as it was throughout the New York metropolitan region that week, though Manhattan Fruitier’s DSL connection never faltered. The company’s server is in California. “Getting through to us was the main issue,” he explained, reflecting the experience of almost all marketers. “The main issue is that people are tending to life-and-death matters and are distracted from the stuff they normally do.”
To make matters worse, with the commercial airliners grounded, the company couldn’t ship existing orders. Gold delivered baskets to customers in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey by UPS ground, but had to call customers in other states and say he could ship by air the Monday after the disaster.
Soon, Gold figures he’ll start getting orders for condolence baskets. But those will not begin to make up for his losses. “There’s no way to recoup it,” he said.
After all, the U.S. economy has been shut down for four days, he pointed out. “But bigger companies have more resources to deal with this.”
And, like many Americans, Gold is preoccupied with the national sorrow. “I’ve thought about promotions that would benefit a relief effort, like giving $10 for every order,” he said. “But I thought people might feel we were capitalizing on what happened.”
Instead, he placed a notice on his Web site: “Manhattan Fruitiers mourns the loss of life of innocent victims.”
The Friday after the hijackings, Gold decided to send his Rosh Hashanah e-mail promo to the usual 3,000 customers, three days before the start of the Jewish New Year. The country was talking about war, but Gold’s e-mail resonated with the necessity of returning to normal life. It read in part, “The healing process entails moving ahead with our lives. In this spirit, we have resumed serving our customers as best we can.”
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